Jerry, is your survey revealing any correlation between diet and plucking? Cage size and plucking? Just curious.

It would be interesting to see a more extensive survey done on 'toos that pluck and don't pluck, including diet (pellets or no? type of pellet? how much fresh foods? percentage organic? eggs and/or meat fed, etc.), cage size, cage location (near a window?), tension in household among humans, what started the plucking, type of water supply (filtered, distilled, tap, etc.), amount of out of cage time, unfiltered sunlight/special lamps, amount of showers, time spent with/on owner each day, training, veterinary test results, etc.). It would be good to include non-plucking birds as well in the survey, to see what could be discovered.

It would also be interesting to hear reports about "cured" former pluckers, too, and what worked for folks that have been successful with this sad problem.

Would anybody else like to see a survey like this done? Would it be possible maybe after you're finished with the current survey?

Yes.. it would be interesting. A much more involved survey has been online for some time now on another website that addresses some of these issues. My reason then was not to compete with the other survey, but to simply find out how many out of a given number of 'Toos pluck or mutilate.The factors I was mostly interested in was at what age did these 'Toos start to pluck. After that I wondered about basic possible reasons like time spent at home/diet/etc. I was also interested in how many homes a 'Too was in at any given age. This then is really not a research project as much as cold hard facts that I can point to when telling wannabe 'Toos owners about the odds of them having a "oven ready" bird depending on their situation. As you can see...on the average we're looking at about 50/50 or more .Those are horrible odds for a creature such as a large 'Too.

Thanks, Jerry. It will be interesting to see if she publicizes the findings, and how. This appeared to be much more general than what I'd consider a feather plucking survey. I was surprised that so little was asked about diet, for instance, and no questions about water supply and some other things. I'll admit I felt a little strange filling out her form, because I have no problems of any kind with my cockatoo. It was kind of like filling out those forms at the doctor's office where you're thinking "thank heavens I don't have THIS!" and by the time you're finished filling out the forms you're thinking maybe you should just leave. LOL!